China's Xiang Lu mulls PTA unit shutdown on 9 Jan

08 January 2009 04:29  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--China’s Xiang Lu Petrochemical plans to shut its 1.65m tonne/year purified terephthalic acid (PTA) unit for about four days from 9 Jan for minor maintenance, a company source said Thursday.

“The short shutdown will allow us to carry out some minor works,” said the source, adding that a shortage of feedstock paraxylene (PX) was also a reason for the shutdown.

Xiang Lu was running the plant located at Xiamen in China's southern Fujian province at around 50% of nameplate capacity since 1 January.

“Supply of PX has been very tight in the past two months, and we cannot afford to buy too expensive PX as PTA margins are just about okay for us,” the source said.

The company last shut the plant in December.

Like most PTA producers, Xiang Lu faces a dearth of PX supply as negotiations for 2009 contracts failed to be finalised and earlier production cutbacks by PX makers had limited the availability of spot cargoes.

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By: Salmon Aidan Lee
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